One-Stop Shop

What is a One-Stop Shop

A one-stop shop is a company that offers a multitude of products or services to its customers. One-stop shop can refer to a specific location, meaning that all the business a client has can be carried out at that location. For example, a bank may be able to offer you not only personal banking services and loans, but also investment advice, investment vehicles and insurance policies. Compared to visiting a separate institution for each area of need, the one-stop shop saves the consumer a lot of time and effort. One-stop shop has been overused, so the equivalent term of full service as in full service broker is more common now.

BREAKING DOWN One-Stop Shop

One-stop shop comes dates back to 1920s America when a shopping trip could mean driving all over town to pick up meat from the butchers, vegetables from the market, nails from the hardware store and so on. Then as now, customers wanted to save time, so stores responded by stocking a wider range of products so that shoppers only had to come to their location to check off the majority of the shopping list. This concept of the one-stop shop expanded over time to include business services. The nuance also shifted from a wide product offering to capture more of the customer's grocery purchase to one of offering all the complimentary products and services to a client in a particular area. The business strategy behind the modernized concept of a one-stop shop is to provide convenient and efficient service that will create the opportunity for the company to sell more to customers. This way a company can grow revenue by selling more to existing customers in addition to growth from new customers.

The Advantages of a One-Stop Shop

There are some obvious advantages to a one-stop shop for consumers as well as the businesses operating them. As mentioned, convenience is a big one. If the firm who does your taxes can also help you with your estate planning and investing strategy, it saves you having to deal with multiple companies. From the firm's perspective, seeing all those aspects of your life also allows them to better tailor services in all areas to you. If the firm sees that your tax bill is going up, they can suggest strategies to minimize the taxes coming from your investments for example. There is also a high level of trust that grows over time when a consumer uses a particular business more and builds a personal connection with it. There may be loyalty perks for the consumer, and the business gains a higher degree of confidence that the customer won't fly to another provider based on price alone.

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